Charles Wuorinen

Composer Charles Wourinen, described everywhere as "uncompromising," died earlier this month. I don't know his music well, but given my liking for other modernists, I plan to investigate him further.

A couple of years ago, musicologist Will Robin wrote a portrait of him for the NY Times, and I have to say, as a human he sounded....difficult and contradictory. I do love the headline, though: "He Has Fans, Fame and an Acclaimed ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Opera. So Why Is Charles Wuorinen So Cranky?"

Well, he was gay, but didn't regard Brokeback Mountain as a gay opera; he sneered at modern use of tonality; he sneered at a lot. The recent portrait includes this:

In a 1988 profile in The New York Times, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, he castigated orchestras, Minimalism, populism, affirmative action and a poorly educated public, declaring that “the current tendency of transmuting art into entertainment will cause serious music to cease to exist.”

I'm glad he turned out to be wrong about that: serious music still exists; some of it is tonal, some of it isn't, and some of it is minimalist. At least some of his fellow composers had a very high opinion of Wuorinen; from Tim Page's Washington Post obit:

In 2011, jazz composer Carla Bley called Mr. Wuorinen “the greatest composer working.” And the proudly poly-stylistic composer John Zorn, who has worked in forms ranging from klezmer to punk rock, recently called Mr. Wuorinen “a true artist whose intense and uncompromising vision produced work of remarkable beauty and drama.”

That's extremely high praise from Bley, considering that in 2011, John (Coolidge) Adams, John Luther Adams, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Unsuk Chin, Kaija Sarriaho, and many other terrific composer were working.

• William Robin, NY Times. "Prickly yet charming public persona."
• Tim Page, Washington Post